Growth for shops: the product feed is your real shop window

How shoppers find products now

A shopper who already knows what they want types the product, the brand or a precise need, and Google often answers with product listings (photo, price, shop name) before any classic result. Those listings come from a Merchant Center feed, not from your homepage. A product that is missing from the feed, or disapproved, simply does not exist there.

A shopper who does not know yet discovers products on Instagram and Facebook, in the feed or in Reels, and comes back later through a search or a retargeting ad. Finally, comparison questions ("best harness for a small cat", "padel racket for beginners") are where useful buying guides and AI assistants come in.

The feed first: what Google actually checks

Google's product data specification lists what every product needs: a unique id, a title, a description, a link to the product page, a main image, availability and price, plus a brand and a GTIN or manufacturer part number for new products. The price and availability in the feed must match what the landing page and the checkout show. Shopping policies also cover prohibited and restricted products and basic site requirements; restricted categories (alcohol, healthcare products and others) may not show everywhere.

In practice, most lost sales we see are boring: titles that do not say what the product is, variants mixed together, missing identifiers, shipping not set for a country, a price that changes on the site but not in the feed. We clean these one by one, then build Shopping campaigns with a daily cap. See Google Shopping and our guide to a clean Merchant Center feed.

What else we do for a shop

• Product photos that match: supplier photos cut out, put on a plain background and framed square, so the catalogue looks like one shop. We never generate fake product images with AI. See ad creatives.
• Meta ads tied to real sales: the pixel plus the Conversions API sending purchases from your server, so campaigns learn from orders, not clicks. See the Conversions API guide.
• GA4 e-commerce events: add_to_cart, begin_checkout and purchase, behind a consent banner where refusing is as easy as accepting. See tracking.
• Pages that can rank: category pages and a few honest buying guides that answer real searches, improved one at a time and re-measured after 28 days.
• A shorter path to pay: one-click checkout where your platform allows it, the minimum of fields, tested on a 390-pixel phone screen.

Shops with a physical store

If you also sell in a store, Google's local inventory ads and free local listings can show your in-store products to nearby shoppers, on Search, Maps and the Products tab. It requires a brick-and-mortar location customers can visit, and stores added in Merchant Center or connected from their Business Profiles. For several locations, Google Business Profile rules ask for one profile per location and the same name across locations unless the real-world name differs. We set this up only when your stock data can be kept accurate; showing products as in stock when they are not costs more than it brings.

What we need from you

• Admin access to your shop platform (Shopify, WooCommerce or other), Merchant Center, and ad accounts in your name; you pay ad spend directly to Google and Meta.
• Your margins per product line, so we can write a stop rule (for example: stop a product group that has not sold within a set budget) before any launch.
• Your shipping and returns policy per country, written down.
• Original photos when you have them, or supplier photos we can clean.